My authors: Found in translation

I love all the authors found here in translation.

Some are no longer with us; and others are very much with us. Some have written poetry, some prose, some both. Some are songwriters, some philosophers, some scientists…A few are translators; a few were translators, and many have already been translated by others.

Some are friends, new and old, and I was lucky enough to translate them, and lucky enough to be translated by them…

I find a space here, in this blog, a niche, amongother voices, voices which are not mine but in which I find and recognize myself; voices I have made mine.

And although it may seem that I have absolutely nothing in common with Galileo Galilei or Leonardo da Vinci, Primo Levi or Liliana Segre, Dino Campana or Eugenio Montale, they speak my thoughts more often than one can imagine. And I hope the same can be said for those who read them in my translations.

There is much talk about good translations and bad translations; but translation is not just a question of linguistics: it is sensitivity, musicality, reflection and introspection. I don’t know if I am a good translator or a bad one. I know that many colleagues would have chosen different solutions, perhaps better solutions. I do my best totranslate words, but I will never know if I amtranslating the meaningbehind the words, what is unspoken, that hazy area between the lines: that is, of course, a question of interpretation, mine, in particular, notwithstanding the research – biographical, historical, and linguistic – which goes intoevery translation.